QOTSA return with ‘The Way You Used To Do’

Following 2013’s Like Clockwork Queens of the Stone Age have made a return with a bruising, blues heavy new track called ‘The Way You Used To Do’. Coming from new album Villains, it’s a fast-paced, tight number produced, surprisingly, by Mark Ronson. When talking about the new sound to NME Josh Homme said: “There are some slower moments but I like to dance, man, and whether it’s Eagles or Queens or Vultures there’s no reason not to conjoin rock’n’roll and dance and hallelujah and darkness and all that in one thing.”

‘The Way You Used To Do’ is a change of pace from Like Clockwork which is regarded to be Queens of the Stone Age’s most sobering record to date, so with Mark Ronson at the helm Villains is due to be a whole different beast. Homme explained that there’s no political motive behind the new album directly: “Queens has always been like an ice-cream parlour or a video arcade, it’s safe from the bullshit of the day… I’m not interested in being topical in that way, yet at the same time it’s completely about now.”

Homme continues: “My philosophy, it seems ever more urgent, is that ‘now’ is all you’ll ever get. It’s all there ever will be. And you need to not wait and do whatever you want to do now. That is inside every moment of the record. It’s got an urgency without an emergency, you know what I mean? I feel the importance of it every minute. I don’t see the reason to wait, noone’s ever been able to give me one that’s worth a shit.”

Villains is due for release August 25th, alongside a UK tour run for the album in November which will hit Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin. Listen to ‘The Way You Used To Do’ here.